Archive for the ‘Louis Farrakhan’ Category

Louis Farrakhan receiving a standing ovation during a press conference in Chicago in 2011.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, made reference to good Jews and 9/11 conspiracy theories in a speech at in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, RNS reported. Farrakhan spoke at the Watergate Hotel for over two hours, touching on race, North Korea and Donald Trump.

I am here from my teacher, not out of hate but out of hope that maybe what I say to this 45th president of the United States of America might have an effect to get him off the course that he is on, Farrakhan said.

Farrakhan spoke next to a large poster that read, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume II: How Jews Gained Control of the Black American Economy.

There are righteous Jews, good Jews, Jews that want to practice the teachings of the prophets, he said. But then there are others who dont wish to practice and it is they that hated Reverend Jacksons desire to be president.

Farrakhan also suggested that Muslims were framed for 9/11, and seemed to suggest that Flint was a government conspiracy.

Dick Gregory touched millions during his 84 years of life. A man with such an enormous life deserved a gigantic home going. So for nearly seven hours, Gregorys family and friends paid tribute to him at a funeral that proved to be a celebration of life and love.

Held at the City of Praise Family Ministries in Landover, Maryland, the service featured video of Cicely Tyson honoring his life; footage of the Dick Gregory documentary I Am Dick Gregory; remarks by the children of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Richard Pryor; a musical tribute by Gregorys daughter Ayanna; a musical tribute by India Arie; remarks by Rev. William Barber; a performance by Joe Morton from the one-man stage play Turn Me Loose; powerful words from Gregorys family members; remarks by Maxine Waters; a eulogy by Minister Louis Farrakhan; and a performance by Stevie Wonder.

Waters spoke about Gregory and his political views against the current administration. He gave up a fortune to help Black people, what are you going to do, Waters asked the audience. Dont come here today and say how much you love him and go to work tomorrow and skin and grin. Its time for us to have courage to do what we need to do. Now is the time for us to have courage. I wish I could sit and talk with Dick because I have work to do. Because Im cleaning out the White House. Im going to sanitize the White House.

Minister Farrakhan shared his thoughts on Gregory by saying, Dick walked amongst us, but he always let his eyes focus on the universe. The God who created all of this cant be pigeonholed. We are immature in our religious expressions. These things are satanic and cause humans to fight each other when we belong to the oneness of the universal creator.

Other notable attendees included Bill Cosby, Lawrence ODonnell of MSNBC, Michael Eric Dyson, and Roland Martin to name a few.

Twitter has yet to remove the blue checkmark from Minister Louis Farrakhans Twitter account as the social media company embarks on a crusade to remove voices that promote hate and violence against protected groups.

Farrakhan, a noted anti-Semite and Nation of Islam leader, still retains his verification status on Twitter, as of Thursday evening. Twitter has already taken away the checkmarks of those who have bigoted views on race, such as white nationalist Richard Spencer, as well as other alt-right and far-right figureheads.

When asked by The Daily Caller News Foundation why Farrakhan still possesses his blue check mark, a Twitter spokesperson pointed TheDCNF to a series of tweets from the company in which it said it was working on a new verification process and would be reviewing those accounts that do not meet the companys guidelines for acceptable behavior.

Minister Farrakhan/Twitter/Screenshot

The Twitter guidelines dictate that promoting hate or violence against others on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity or religious background, as well as supporting those who do the same is grounds for verification removal, among other violations.

It would seem that Farrakhan, well known for his railings against the Jewish community and classification of whites as white devils,would classify to have his verification removed. He has called Judaism a gutter religion, described Hitler as a very great man in a 1984 speech and blamed Jewish people for sending the United States to hell in another speech. He warned Jewish people of how when its God who puts you in the ovens, its forever. He has also repeatedly described Jewish people as satanic.

Farrakhan has a history of making bigoted statements against white people, once declaring that white people deserve to die, and they know, so they think its us coming to do it at a Milwaukee event. He also described white people as potential humans who havent evolved yet.

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In honor of the 22nd anniversary of the Million Man March, Minister Louis Farrakhan is scheduled to speak in Newark on Oct. 15 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Newark Symphony Hall (1020 Broad St.).

Farrakhans speech is titled Separation or Death. It will be live-streamed on the Nation of Islams website, www.noi.org.

The Million Man March was a mass gathering of African-American men in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 16, 1995, called by Farrakhan. The purpose of the march was to convey to the world a vastly different picture of the Black male.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) Minister Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, was in downtown Grand Rapids Wednesday as lawyers argued about accusations of a conspiracy in the drowning death of a local member of the organization.

Farrakhan and his entourage were inside the Kent County courthouse to support the family of Robert Dion Muhammad.

Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islams Grand Rapids Study Group, disappeared after officials said he jumped off a sailboat for a swim in Muskegon Lake on Sept. 5, 2014. Crews found his body in 28 feet of water at the Muskegon State Park the day after, which also would have been his 40th birthday.

On Wednesday, lawyers for Muhammads family were trying to amend a wrongful death suit. Defendants range from the people who were on the boat to first responders who searched for and later discovered Muhammads body.

The victims attorney claims there is sufficient evidence to suggest there might have been a conspiracy to cover up a murder, not an accident.He laid out a series of scenarios, pointing out signs of trauma to Muhammads body which experts say is sometimes the result of recovery efforts and the fact that he had been on a boat with white co-workers before the drowning.

It has been alleged multiple times that this (suit) is some political endeavor, as if we caused Robert Mohammads death, the Muhmmads attorney said, as opposed to playing the hand that weve been dealt.

Attorneys for the defendants say the other side is trying to throw whatever it can at the wall and see what sticks.

We really know that the pink elephant in the room is, the defendants attorney said. All they want to do is to make some presentation as to what could of,should of, maybe happened without any facts to support it.

Farrakhan is not one to shy away from controversy, but he declined to talk to reporters at the courthouse.

Were good right now, one of the men with Farrakhan told the 24 Hour News 8 crew who approached him. Its a sensitive case.

The judge turned down some of the motions requested by the plaintiff, but there are other matters to deal with. The hearing continues Thursday. It was not immediately known whether Farrakhan will be in attendance again.

Some 25 years ago I remember watching, on C-SPAN, a convention of American Maoists.

This was before Brian Lambs splendid little kingdom became a citadel of balanced respectability, when C-SPAN was young, carefree and as enamored with novelty as the average American adolescent.

A towering black and red portrait of Chairman Mao dominated the stage, as bereted speakers declared their admiration for a monster who stands condemned before history as the murderer of between 50 million and 70 million Chinese.

I remember walking home from work in New York City almost every weekday from 1983 to 1989, and being several times stopped in my tracks by a group of people with a microphone advocating genocide.

They were black men, and although I no longer remember who they were in the corporate sense, I remember they all impersonated Mr. Ts famous glare as they promised death and slavery to the white man as recompense for historical wrongs.

I recall watching the Nation of Islams Louis Farrakhan preach, again courtesy of C-SPAN, and being impressed. It is politically incorrect, of course, to speak well of Minister Farrakhan, but there he was urging his followers to achieve self-reliance and to build honorable, intact families, and urging the men to take responsibility for leading black America into the bright light of freedom. And then, before my wondering eyes, he denounced the white devil and dirty Jews, and my heart sank.

I suppose it is possible to read that chapter of William Shirers Rise and Fall of the Third Reich titled The New Order and not shed a tear, but it did not prove possible for me. That chapter deals with the attempted annihilation of European Jewry and does not spare scenes of whimpering mothers clutching toddlers as they stand on the edge of mass graves facing some soul-deadened machine gunner.

There are neo-Nazis in this country. I dont know why. Perhaps they have not read Shirer. But they have been around a long time, publishing their little newsletters and handing out slim booklets warning of global Jewish conspiracies.

There are Maoists. There are black radicals, and there are masked, black-uniformed young thugs who for several years now have smashed windows, turned over cars, wielded baseball bats and hurled insults and projectiles at police officers in order to silence speech they would forbid.

The impulse to bully is not foreign to Americans, and given that we are all inflicted with fallen human nature there is no reason why it should be. Yet, so far, the United States has avoided the brutalities that not long ago afflicted Germany, Japan, Russia and a constellation of Soviet satellites from Romania to North Korea. The credit for this belongs to Americas constitutional commitment to freedom of speech. That is the safety valve.

Let them speak, let them rally, let them dream of racial or ideological purity. Let them live, or more likely die, on the battlefield of ideas. Crush them, certainly, the moment they exchange words for violence.

Many Americans know that the sickness at the heart of our political culture stems from a spirit of intolerance that has become the keynote of discourse. Liberals blame it on President Donald Trump and his supporters. But few of us seem able to recognize this behavior when it comes from those who share our views which means that if you think Dennis Prager must be boycotted or believe Morton Klein is as much of a threat to American Jewry as Islamist terrorists, then dont blame Trump for how bad things have gotten.

Prager, a Los Angeles-based talk radio host and author, is a surprising candidate for this kind of opprobrium. Though hes a conservative who, to the dismay of some of his admirers, believes Trump must be supported against his critics, Prager is far from the prototype of right-wing incendiary. His approach is generally fair-minded and never lacks intellectual rigor. He has also spent much of his career promoting interfaith dialogue and is as interested in helping his audience focus on personal happiness as he is in politics. In other words, hes the polar opposite of the bomb-throwing populists that many on the left think are threatening democracy.

But that didnt spare Prager from being treated as if he were the head of a hate group when he agreed to help raise money for the Santa Monica Symphony by appearing as a guest conductor at a concert. Prager is a music enthusiast/amateur conductor and has often appeared in a similar capacity with other ensembles. But when some of the musicians heard Prager was the attraction at a high-profile event for their organization, they said they would boycott the concert.

A petition started by two UCLA professors who are violinists in the orchestra said the signers would not appear with a right-wing radio host who promotes horribly bigoted positions. To back up that claim, they cherry-picked a few comments Prager has made about Islam and the implications of gay marriage in order to falsely paint him as the moral equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. One boycotter even said hed play with a North Korean conductor, but not Prager.

Pragers positions can be debated, yet to take them out of context is deeply unfair, especially when you consider it wasnt long ago that both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shared his stance on gay marriage. But if you are going to anathematize someone like Prager and render him an untouchable even in a non-political context, youre saying anyone who voices an opposing view must not only be shunned, but also be driven from decent society.

The same spirit animated an op-ed in The Forward by Steven Davidson. The piece was a response to commentary from the right about the lefts willingness to excuse hatemongering from Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American anti-Israel activist, because of shared antipathy for Trump. According to Davidson, there are 19 people who are more dangerous to the Jews than Sarsour. But while his list included some who do fit that bill, like Louis Farrakhan, David Duke and the heads of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, he couldnt resist including mere political opponents along with terrorists.

It was bad enough that he lumped Trump as well as White House aides Steve Bannon who left last week and Sebastian Gorka together with Farrakhan and Hezbollah, in an unconvincing effort to label them as anti-Semites. But he also listed Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America.

Most liberals dont agree with Klein about the peace process and consider him a strident figure. But he is someone who works hard to build support for the Jewish state, and his views are actually more in tune with mainstream Israeli opinion than those of The Forwards editorial board. Treating him as a threat to the Jews rather than just someone to be opposed is a signal that any deviation from liberal orthodoxy will be punished with isolation and demonization.

In a world in which Google can fire an internal critic in the name of diversity, its hardly surprising to see Jewish liberals playing the same game. But those who refuse to listen to or to associate with political opponents are at the core of our societys current political illness, in which we have been divided into two warring camps that have lost the ability to listen to each other. Thats why if you think theres nothing wrong with the treatment given to Prager and Klein, then dont bother the rest of us with hypocritical complaints about Trump.

Jonathan S. Tobin is a former editor of the Jewish Exponent and is the opinion editor of JNS.org, which provided this article.

There is comfort to be taken in some of what emerged from the ugliness of Charlottesville. Despite the horrific events, there is surely solace to be had in the widespread revulsion, for example, that was evoked in so very many Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, by the marching and chanting white supremacists. And the utter rejection by many conservative media and leading lawmakers from President Trumps own party of his equivocating over the events in Virginia should also bring us a measure of comfort, as well as the accelerated removal of statues lionizing Confederate leaders.

But for me, an Orthodox rabbi, Charlottesville is also an opportunity for something I have long hoped for: a coming together of African Americans and Jews.

Since the days in which Jews marched alongside our black brothers and sisters in Selma for civil rights, there has been a tragic fraying of the relationship between these two American populations. But in truth, the relationship between the two groups has always been fraught, and understandably so.

As many in our community are fond of saying, America has been good to the Jews. From the smattering of Sephardi Jews who came to these shores in colonial times to the German Jews who followed in the nineteenth century to the Eastern European survivors of the Holocaust, the Jews who arrived on Americas shores all found America to be, truly, a land of opportunity, and many found success in business, professions, academics and other fields. They were, particularly the refugees among them, reborn in their new land.

Black people, by contrast, could never be reborn here in the same way because of how they came here. Its hard, one imagines, to conjure the image of a goldeneh medina, the gilded land that was America to European Jews, while bound in the hold of a slave ship. And while subsequent generations of Jews were able to build on their forebears successes, the descendants of American slaves came to be marked not only by the hue of their skin but by the emotional legacy of their ancestors experiences.

And so, even after Jim Crow the man, a white entertainer who performed in blackface, had long been buried, and the laws that came to carry his name undermined by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the psychological legacy of slavery and the persistence of racial discrimination prevented many black people from economic and social advancement. Add the War on Drugs, the prison industrial complex, and the practice of red-lining that banks used to keep African Americans from being able to purchase their homes and climb into the middle class, we have one of Americas worst moral stains, one which persists to this day.

Unfortunately, my community is not free of discrimination. Many Jews, like other white people, tended to look condescendingly on African Americans, and the latter readily reciprocated with resentment. In some cases, that resentment came from the leadership, like Louis Farrakhan and his followers, with their fantasy-fueled hatred. In others, it came from personal and communal tragedies, like the 1991 race riots in Crown Heights.

My personal experience was different, though. I spent my childhood in an observant Jewish home (my father, of blessed memory, was the rabbi of a small Baltimore shul) and a racially mixed neighborhood; one of my best friends was a black boy a bit older than I. Junie and I would play ball and ride our bikes on the rocky hills near where we lived. It was a mixed-race friendship that seems unthinkable in todays racial climate. In neighborhoods like Crown Heights and Flatbush, you dont often see African American kids playing with Jewish kids.

Baltimore was very much the South, and our domestic help was an African American woman named Lucille Jackson. My mother, of blessed memory, a Polish immigrant, treated her like a part of the family, and Lucille was like a tante to me. When she grew too old to do real work, my mother would have her come over all the same to do some dusting, so that Mama could, as always, serve her lunch and pay her wages, as compensation, not charity. That lesson in kavod habriot, honoring all people, remains with me to this day. Then there was Dhanna, the librarian in Providence, Rhode Island, where my wife and I raised our children, who was so kind to them during their frequent visits to the public library, always encouraging them, helping them find what they were looking for and proudly placing the artwork they regularly produced for her on her desk for all to see. And Desi, our own young daughters friend, who became quite conversant with the laws of kashrut and Shabbat.

I realize that my personal upbringing and experiences may not have been typical for a haredi Jew. There is distrust, if not disdain, in parts of the haredi world in fact, in the larger Jewish one, too for black people. Just as there is animus among some in the African American community for Jews.

I have had unpleasant encounters, too. I wont forget the group of boys who asked my classmates and me if they could join our baseball game. Once their team was at bat, its members decided to turn the Louisville Sluggers on us. No one should ever have to hear the sound of wood hitting skull.

I also wont forget the Heil Hitler that a black teen delighted in shouting at my father and me when we would walk together to shul. Even these days, I come across the occasional anti-Semite of color. One actually greeted me mere months ago on a city bus with a hearty Heil Hitler! of his own.

Of course, I have met more than the occasional pale-faced Jew-baiter, too. There are good and bad people in every population, something whose implications we too often overlook. Mindful of the Talmudic imperative to judge all men favorably (Avot, 1:6) and my parents example, I have never measured any human being by any yardstick other than his own words or deeds, and never prejudged anyone because of his race or the behavior of any of its other members. And my wife and I always sought and I think successfully to instill that same attitude in our children.

All the same, in my experience, the arc of the moral universe, to use abolitionist Theodore Parkers memorable phrase (made famous by Reverend King), has been bending toward justice. While most Orthodox Jews and African Americans tend to live in their own, separate social and cultural milieus, it isnt unusual anymore to see sincerely friendly interactions between members of the two groups.

Its not unusual, but its also not often enough.

What might hopefully advance that happy development is Charlottesville. The ad promoting the Unite the Right rally was designed to evoke a fascist poster, with birds reminiscent of the Nazi eagle soaring through the sky over marchers carrying Confederate flags instead of swastikas.

Ponder that. Nazi eagles and Confederate flags.

White supremacists was the self-definition of choice among the marchers. And as they marched that Jewish Sabbath night, the torches they carried intentionally evocative of those of Klansmen, they chanted, loudly, lustily, Jews shall not replace us! And Blood and soil! an English rendering of the Nazi blut und boden.

This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal n****s, one demonstrator informed a Vice News reporter.

The time has come, in this post-Charlottesville era, for all Jews and all African Americans to reject generalizations born of the worst examples in the others community and recognize that the malevolent drawing of a circle around our two peoples should impel us to understand, despite how dissimilar we may be, how joined, in fact, we are.

Avi Shafran blogs at rabbiavishafran.com and serves as Agudath Israel of Americas director of public affairs.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

Getty Louis Farrakhan receiving a standing ovation during a press conference in Chicago in 2011. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, made reference to good Jews and 9/11 conspiracy theories in a speech at in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, RNS reported. Farrakhan spoke at the Watergate Hotel for over two hours, touching on race, North Korea and Donald Trump. I am here from my teacher, not out of hate but out of hope that maybe what I say to this 45th president of the United States of America might have an effect to get him off the course that he is on, Farrakhan said. Farrakhan spoke next to a large poster that read, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume II: How Jews Gained Control of the Black American Economy. There are righteous Jews, good Jews, Jews that want to practice the teachings of the prophets, he said. But then there are others who dont wish to practice and it is they that hated Reverend Jacksons desire to be president. Farrakhan also suggested that Muslims were framed for 9/11, and seemed to suggest that Flint was a government conspiracy. Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.

Dick Gregorys daughter joins Stevie Wonder Dick Gregory touched millions during his 84 years of life. A man with such an enormous life deserved a gigantic home going. So for nearly seven hours, Gregorys family and friends paid tribute to him at a funeral that proved to be a celebration of life and love. Held at the City of Praise Family Ministries in Landover, Maryland, the service featured video of Cicely Tyson honoring his life; footage of the Dick Gregory documentary I Am Dick Gregory; remarks by the children of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Richard Pryor; a musical tribute by Gregorys daughter Ayanna; a musical tribute by India Arie; remarks by Rev. William Barber; a performance by Joe Morton from the one-man stage play Turn Me Loose; powerful words from Gregorys family members; remarks by Maxine Waters; a eulogy by Minister Louis Farrakhan; and a performance by Stevie Wonder. Waters spoke about Gregory and his political views against the current administration. He gave up a fortune to help Black people, what are you going to do, Waters asked the audience. Dont come here today and say how much you love him and go to work tomorrow and skin and grin. Its time for us to have courage to do what we need to do. Now is the time for us to have courage. I wish I could sit and talk with Dick because I have work to do. Because Im cleaning out the White House. Im going to sanitize the White House. Minister Farrakhan shared his thoughts on Gregory by saying, Dick walked amongst us, but he always let his eyes focus on the universe. The God who created all of this cant be pigeonholed. We are immature in our religious expressions. These things are satanic and cause humans to fight each other when we belong to the oneness of the universal creator. Other notable attendees included Bill Cosby, Lawrence ODonnell of MSNBC, Michael Eric Dyson, and Roland Martin to name a few.

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Twitter has yet to remove the blue checkmark from Minister Louis Farrakhans Twitter account as the social media company embarks on a crusade to remove voices that promote hate and violence against protected groups. Farrakhan, a noted anti-Semite and Nation of Islam leader, still retains his verification status on Twitter, as of Thursday evening. Twitter has already taken away the checkmarks of those who have bigoted views on race, such as white nationalist Richard Spencer, as well as other alt-right and far-right figureheads. When asked by The Daily Caller News Foundation why Farrakhan still possesses his blue check mark, a Twitter spokesperson pointed TheDCNF to a series of tweets from the company in which it said it was working on a new verification process and would be reviewing those accounts that do not meet the companys guidelines for acceptable behavior. Minister Farrakhan/Twitter/Screenshot The Twitter guidelines dictate that promoting hate or violence against others on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity or religious background, as well as supporting those who do the same is grounds for verification removal, among other violations. It would seem that Farrakhan, well known for his railings against the Jewish community and classification of whites as white devils,would classify to have his verification removed. He has called Judaism a gutter religion, described Hitler as a very great man in a 1984 speech and blamed Jewish people for sending the United States to hell in another speech. He warned Jewish people of how when its God who puts you in the ovens, its forever. He has also repeatedly described Jewish people as satanic. Farrakhan has a history of making bigoted statements against white people, once declaring that white people deserve to die, and they know, so they think its us coming to do it at a Milwaukee event. He also described white people as potential humans who havent evolved yet. Follow Amber on Twitter Send tips to [emailprotected]. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [emailprotected].

In honor of the 22nd anniversary of the Million Man March, Minister Louis Farrakhan is scheduled to speak in Newark on Oct. 15 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Newark Symphony Hall (1020 Broad St.). Farrakhans speech is titled Separation or Death. It will be live-streamed on the Nation of Islams website, www.noi.org. The Million Man March was a mass gathering of African-American men in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 16, 1995, called by Farrakhan. The purpose of the march was to convey to the world a vastly different picture of the Black male. Call 973-624-5532 for tickets and more information.

Related Coverage GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) Minister Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, was in downtown Grand Rapids Wednesday as lawyers argued about accusations of a conspiracy in the drowning death of a local member of the organization. Farrakhan and his entourage were inside the Kent County courthouse to support the family of Robert Dion Muhammad. Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islams Grand Rapids Study Group, disappeared after officials said he jumped off a sailboat for a swim in Muskegon Lake on Sept. 5, 2014. Crews found his body in 28 feet of water at the Muskegon State Park the day after, which also would have been his 40th birthday. On Wednesday, lawyers for Muhammads family were trying to amend a wrongful death suit. Defendants range from the people who were on the boat to first responders who searched for and later discovered Muhammads body. The victims attorney claims there is sufficient evidence to suggest there might have been a conspiracy to cover up a murder, not an accident.He laid out a series of scenarios, pointing out signs of trauma to Muhammads body which experts say is sometimes the result of recovery efforts and the fact that he had been on a boat with white co-workers before the drowning. It has been alleged multiple times that this (suit) is some political endeavor, as if we caused Robert Mohammads death, the Muhmmads attorney said, as opposed to playing the hand that weve been dealt. Attorneys for the defendants say the other side is trying to throw whatever it can at the wall and see what sticks. We really know that the pink elephant in the room is, the defendants attorney said. All they want to do is to make some presentation as to what could of,should of, maybe happened without any facts to support it. Farrakhan is not one to shy away from controversy, but he declined to talk to reporters at the courthouse. Were good right now, one of the men with Farrakhan told the 24 Hour News 8 crew who approached him. Its a sensitive case. The judge turned down some of the motions requested by the plaintiff, but there are other matters to deal with. The hearing continues Thursday. It was not immediately known whether Farrakhan will be in attendance again.

Some 25 years ago I remember watching, on C-SPAN, a convention of American Maoists. This was before Brian Lambs splendid little kingdom became a citadel of balanced respectability, when C-SPAN was young, carefree and as enamored with novelty as the average American adolescent. A towering black and red portrait of Chairman Mao dominated the stage, as bereted speakers declared their admiration for a monster who stands condemned before history as the murderer of between 50 million and 70 million Chinese. I remember walking home from work in New York City almost every weekday from 1983 to 1989, and being several times stopped in my tracks by a group of people with a microphone advocating genocide. They were black men, and although I no longer remember who they were in the corporate sense, I remember they all impersonated Mr. Ts famous glare as they promised death and slavery to the white man as recompense for historical wrongs. I recall watching the Nation of Islams Louis Farrakhan preach, again courtesy of C-SPAN, and being impressed. It is politically incorrect, of course, to speak well of Minister Farrakhan, but there he was urging his followers to achieve self-reliance and to build honorable, intact families, and urging the men to take responsibility for leading black America into the bright light of freedom. And then, before my wondering eyes, he denounced the white devil and dirty Jews, and my heart sank. I suppose it is possible to read that chapter of William Shirers Rise and Fall of the Third Reich titled The New Order and not shed a tear, but it did not prove possible for me. That chapter deals with the attempted annihilation of European Jewry and does not spare scenes of whimpering mothers clutching toddlers as they stand on the edge of mass graves facing some soul-deadened machine gunner. There are neo-Nazis in this country. I dont know why. Perhaps they have not read Shirer. But they have been around a long time, publishing their little newsletters and handing out slim booklets warning of global Jewish conspiracies. There are Maoists. There are black radicals, and there are masked, black-uniformed young thugs who for several years now have smashed windows, turned over cars, wielded baseball bats and hurled insults and projectiles at police officers in order to silence speech they would forbid. The impulse to bully is not foreign to Americans, and given that we are all inflicted with fallen human nature there is no reason why it should be. Yet, so far, the United States has avoided the brutalities that not long ago afflicted Germany, Japan, Russia and a constellation of Soviet satellites from Romania to North Korea. The credit for this belongs to Americas constitutional commitment to freedom of speech. That is the safety valve. Let them speak, let them rally, let them dream of racial or ideological purity. Let them live, or more likely die, on the battlefield of ideas. Crush them, certainly, the moment they exchange words for violence. A thousand weeds have withered this way. Its part of the American genius.

By Jonathan S. Tobin Many Americans know that the sickness at the heart of our political culture stems from a spirit of intolerance that has become the keynote of discourse. Liberals blame it on President Donald Trump and his supporters. But few of us seem able to recognize this behavior when it comes from those who share our views which means that if you think Dennis Prager must be boycotted or believe Morton Klein is as much of a threat to American Jewry as Islamist terrorists, then dont blame Trump for how bad things have gotten. Prager, a Los Angeles-based talk radio host and author, is a surprising candidate for this kind of opprobrium. Though hes a conservative who, to the dismay of some of his admirers, believes Trump must be supported against his critics, Prager is far from the prototype of right-wing incendiary. His approach is generally fair-minded and never lacks intellectual rigor. He has also spent much of his career promoting interfaith dialogue and is as interested in helping his audience focus on personal happiness as he is in politics. In other words, hes the polar opposite of the bomb-throwing populists that many on the left think are threatening democracy. But that didnt spare Prager from being treated as if he were the head of a hate group when he agreed to help raise money for the Santa Monica Symphony by appearing as a guest conductor at a concert. Prager is a music enthusiast/amateur conductor and has often appeared in a similar capacity with other ensembles. But when some of the musicians heard Prager was the attraction at a high-profile event for their organization, they said they would boycott the concert. A petition started by two UCLA professors who are violinists in the orchestra said the signers would not appear with a right-wing radio host who promotes horribly bigoted positions. To back up that claim, they cherry-picked a few comments Prager has made about Islam and the implications of gay marriage in order to falsely paint him as the moral equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. One boycotter even said hed play with a North Korean conductor, but not Prager. Pragers positions can be debated, yet to take them out of context is deeply unfair, especially when you consider it wasnt long ago that both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shared his stance on gay marriage. But if you are going to anathematize someone like Prager and render him an untouchable even in a non-political context, youre saying anyone who voices an opposing view must not only be shunned, but also be driven from decent society. The same spirit animated an op-ed in The Forward by Steven Davidson. The piece was a response to commentary from the right about the lefts willingness to excuse hatemongering from Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American anti-Israel activist, because of shared antipathy for Trump. According to Davidson, there are 19 people who are more dangerous to the Jews than Sarsour. But while his list included some who do fit that bill, like Louis Farrakhan, David Duke and the heads of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, he couldnt resist including mere political opponents along with terrorists. It was bad enough that he lumped Trump as well as White House aides Steve Bannon who left last week and Sebastian Gorka together with Farrakhan and Hezbollah, in an unconvincing effort to label them as anti-Semites. But he also listed Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America. Most liberals dont agree with Klein about the peace process and consider him a strident figure. But he is someone who works hard to build support for the Jewish state, and his views are actually more in tune with mainstream Israeli opinion than those of The Forwards editorial board. Treating him as a threat to the Jews rather than just someone to be opposed is a signal that any deviation from liberal orthodoxy will be punished with isolation and demonization. In a world in which Google can fire an internal critic in the name of diversity, its hardly surprising to see Jewish liberals playing the same game. But those who refuse to listen to or to associate with political opponents are at the core of our societys current political illness, in which we have been divided into two warring camps that have lost the ability to listen to each other. Thats why if you think theres nothing wrong with the treatment given to Prager and Klein, then dont bother the rest of us with hypocritical complaints about Trump. Jonathan S. Tobin is a former editor of the Jewish Exponent and is the opinion editor of JNS.org, which provided this article.

There is comfort to be taken in some of what emerged from the ugliness of Charlottesville. Despite the horrific events, there is surely solace to be had in the widespread revulsion, for example, that was evoked in so very many Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, by the marching and chanting white supremacists. And the utter rejection by many conservative media and leading lawmakers from President Trumps own party of his equivocating over the events in Virginia should also bring us a measure of comfort, as well as the accelerated removal of statues lionizing Confederate leaders. But for me, an Orthodox rabbi, Charlottesville is also an opportunity for something I have long hoped for: a coming together of African Americans and Jews. Since the days in which Jews marched alongside our black brothers and sisters in Selma for civil rights, there has been a tragic fraying of the relationship between these two American populations. But in truth, the relationship between the two groups has always been fraught, and understandably so. As many in our community are fond of saying, America has been good to the Jews. From the smattering of Sephardi Jews who came to these shores in colonial times to the German Jews who followed in the nineteenth century to the Eastern European survivors of the Holocaust, the Jews who arrived on Americas shores all found America to be, truly, a land of opportunity, and many found success in business, professions, academics and other fields. They were, particularly the refugees among them, reborn in their new land. Black people, by contrast, could never be reborn here in the same way because of how they came here. Its hard, one imagines, to conjure the image of a goldeneh medina, the gilded land that was America to European Jews, while bound in the hold of a slave ship. And while subsequent generations of Jews were able to build on their forebears successes, the descendants of American slaves came to be marked not only by the hue of their skin but by the emotional legacy of their ancestors experiences. And so, even after Jim Crow the man, a white entertainer who performed in blackface, had long been buried, and the laws that came to carry his name undermined by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the psychological legacy of slavery and the persistence of racial discrimination prevented many black people from economic and social advancement. Add the War on Drugs, the prison industrial complex, and the practice of red-lining that banks used to keep African Americans from being able to purchase their homes and climb into the middle class, we have one of Americas worst moral stains, one which persists to this day. Unfortunately, my community is not free of discrimination. Many Jews, like other white people, tended to look condescendingly on African Americans, and the latter readily reciprocated with resentment. In some cases, that resentment came from the leadership, like Louis Farrakhan and his followers, with their fantasy-fueled hatred. In others, it came from personal and communal tragedies, like the 1991 race riots in Crown Heights. My personal experience was different, though. I spent my childhood in an observant Jewish home (my father, of blessed memory, was the rabbi of a small Baltimore shul) and a racially mixed neighborhood; one of my best friends was a black boy a bit older than I. Junie and I would play ball and ride our bikes on the rocky hills near where we lived. It was a mixed-race friendship that seems unthinkable in todays racial climate. In neighborhoods like Crown Heights and Flatbush, you dont often see African American kids playing with Jewish kids. Baltimore was very much the South, and our domestic help was an African American woman named Lucille Jackson. My mother, of blessed memory, a Polish immigrant, treated her like a part of the family, and Lucille was like a tante to me. When she grew too old to do real work, my mother would have her come over all the same to do some dusting, so that Mama could, as always, serve her lunch and pay her wages, as compensation, not charity. That lesson in kavod habriot, honoring all people, remains with me to this day. Then there was Dhanna, the librarian in Providence, Rhode Island, where my wife and I raised our children, who was so kind to them during their frequent visits to the public library, always encouraging them, helping them find what they were looking for and proudly placing the artwork they regularly produced for her on her desk for all to see. And Desi, our own young daughters friend, who became quite conversant with the laws of kashrut and Shabbat. I realize that my personal upbringing and experiences may not have been typical for a haredi Jew. There is distrust, if not disdain, in parts of the haredi world in fact, in the larger Jewish one, too for black people. Just as there is animus among some in the African American community for Jews. I have had unpleasant encounters, too. I wont forget the group of boys who asked my classmates and me if they could join our baseball game. Once their team was at bat, its members decided to turn the Louisville Sluggers on us. No one should ever have to hear the sound of wood hitting skull. I also wont forget the Heil Hitler that a black teen delighted in shouting at my father and me when we would walk together to shul. Even these days, I come across the occasional anti-Semite of color. One actually greeted me mere months ago on a city bus with a hearty Heil Hitler! of his own. Of course, I have met more than the occasional pale-faced Jew-baiter, too. There are good and bad people in every population, something whose implications we too often overlook. Mindful of the Talmudic imperative to judge all men favorably (Avot, 1:6) and my parents example, I have never measured any human being by any yardstick other than his own words or deeds, and never prejudged anyone because of his race or the behavior of any of its other members. And my wife and I always sought and I think successfully to instill that same attitude in our children. All the same, in my experience, the arc of the moral universe, to use abolitionist Theodore Parkers memorable phrase (made famous by Reverend King), has been bending toward justice. While most Orthodox Jews and African Americans tend to live in their own, separate social and cultural milieus, it isnt unusual anymore to see sincerely friendly interactions between members of the two groups. Its not unusual, but its also not often enough. What might hopefully advance that happy development is Charlottesville. The ad promoting the Unite the Right rally was designed to evoke a fascist poster, with birds reminiscent of the Nazi eagle soaring through the sky over marchers carrying Confederate flags instead of swastikas. Ponder that. Nazi eagles and Confederate flags. White supremacists was the self-definition of choice among the marchers. And as they marched that Jewish Sabbath night, the torches they carried intentionally evocative of those of Klansmen, they chanted, loudly, lustily, Jews shall not replace us! And Blood and soil! an English rendering of the Nazi blut und boden. This city is run by Jewish communists and criminal n****s, one demonstrator informed a Vice News reporter. The time has come, in this post-Charlottesville era, for all Jews and all African Americans to reject generalizations born of the worst examples in the others community and recognize that the malevolent drawing of a circle around our two peoples should impel us to understand, despite how dissimilar we may be, how joined, in fact, we are. Avi Shafran blogs at rabbiavishafran.com and serves as Agudath Israel of Americas director of public affairs. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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